We had a client ask why their book could not be found in the bookstores. It is a common question. One that I tried to answer last year in a post about logistics. Today I’ll approach it from a different direction. The sheer number of books that are being published.
Let me start with two sets of statistics. Barnes & Noble (B&N) is the largest retail bookstore in the U.S. Their stores are about 25,000 square feet in size and carry at least 100,000 unique titles on their shelves. I love walking into one of their stores hoping to find a new treasure.
Next let’s look at the largest publisher in the world, Penguin Random House (PRH). They have 250 imprints on 5 continents and publish 15,000 new titles per year.
Think about that for a moment. B&N carries 100,000 titles, but PRH creates 15,000 new ones each year. And that is just one publisher, albeit a really big one!
There are rough estimates that over 300,000 new books are published each year, in English. (Based on the number of ISBN numbers issued annually.) This does not include the other books published without an ISBN through Amazon’s Create Space service (Amazon issues an ASIN – Amazon Standard Identification Number) so it is possible we could add another 50,000 to 100,000 titles to that total.
When I was the national buyer for a large Christian bookstore chain our largest stores carried about 10,000 unique titles but I estimated that I saw 5,000 new books each year and had to choose which ones were carried in our stores.
You can quickly see the problem for you, the author. If your book is not going to get substantial exposure in the market, or your “platform” is not one that will drive people into stores or online to buy your book, it is likely your book will not be found on the shelves of your local store.
I remember one customer who asked me, “Have you read every book in the store?” I laughed and said, “I’m sorry ma’am but I’m a bit outnumbered.” It is the same for any store with limited shelf space.
This is one reason the Amazon’s of the world have an advantage because their shelves are limitless online. But I can understand an author’s desire to walk into their local store and find their book. Nothing wrong with that. However, one cannot or should not blame their publisher for not getting it on that particular shelf at the moment you walk into that specific store.
For all you know your book is actually in the store, just on the wrong shelf. I still remember seeing Charles Swindoll’s Improving Your Serve (a book about serving your church and your community) in the Sports section along with the other Tennis books. Another time I found a Janette Oke prairie romance in-between Max Brand and Louis L’Amour in the Western novels section.
As with our last post on this topic, we are not discussing whether or not bookstores are going defunct, or whether ebooks are superior to physical books. Merely a conversation on one of the challenges a bookstore faces.
This is even a bigger problem for Christian bookstores and even more so in some regions of the country. I live in the Baltimore-Washington area. Around here, the Christian novel often gets lumped in on a shelf around the “Religion/Spirituality” section. Even in the Christian bookstores the fiction section is a small sub-section of the increasingly smaller book side of the store (the other side being mostly gift items). The idea that there is a Sport section or even a Western section (by Christian authors) is very foreign to me. It’s why I’ve relied heavily on online retailers for my fiction reading altogether.
I wasn’t talking about a Christian bookstore with a Sports or Western section. These were general bookstores with books mis-identified by a clerk.
This meant that the computer shows that book as being in the store (according to the database) but no one can find it because a clerk stuck it in the wrong place based on the title or the cover.
Whenever I find my nonfiction parenting book on a shelf in an area bookstore, I always try to find the manager to thank him for stocking my book, knowing that he had so many choices–that he choose mine is wonderful, and I let him know it. I’m hoping that will remind the buyers and managers remember my name when I have a new title available–and stock my new work.
Perfect. The right balance of respect and gratitude.
Then you can offer to do a book signing as part of a future event that the store might create. Try not to be the only person at the signing. Be one part of a carnival atmosphere. Keeps you from being depressed when everyone wants cotton candy instead of a book signed by the author!
In my ancient days as a bookseller we had everything from the lonely author with one book sold in three hours to a line of 400 people waiting outside the door to have a book signed.
Your mileage may vary…
Writing and publishing is no different than other businesses in the fact that if you want to be successful, you have to do self-promotion. Just because you make it or write it, doesn’t mean you’ll be overwhelmed with orders.
This hearkens back to previous posts relating to the business of building a platform.As writers, we also need to be marketers as well. Something a lot of writers have problems with doing.
Exactly!
I’m putting my ignorance on display here, but if a national buyer for a chain store chooses which books to stock, who should an author talk to about having their book stocked in a local branch of that chain (if it wasn’t chosen to be stocked nationally)? Is the local branch manager able to choose books to stock locally that the national buyer rejected?
Also, does a national buyer have the time to take an author’s platform into consideration when selecting books or does he have to make fairly snap decisions based on first impressions (due to the high volume of books)?
A chain like Barnes & Noble usually has someone on staff dedicated to in-store events. An author should reach out to each store in their area and find out who that person is. It might be the store manager…who is also dealing with everything from making sure there is toilet paper in the customer bathroom, to the irate customer shouting at the register because they didn’t like a book they bought last week. (Try working in a bookstore for a week and be amazed…)
Every chain works differently. Some give a measure of local control to the individual store manager. Some simply reject all local author attempts to place physical books in the store. Join a local published author group and see what they have found. There are ACFW and RWA chapters all over the country who can help novelists in particular.
As for time to make a decision? The buyer will rely on the strength of the pitch by the publisher, the recognized name of the author, past sales history by that author (the buyer will look to see what was sold of their last book), etc.
Hi, Steve. I really appreciate this article because I’ve never stopped to consider how books so outnumber bookstores and maybe even human beings. Do you think?
It also made me chuckle to imagine books shelved in the wrong genre.
As long as some copies are in the proper section, shelving a copy in the “wrong place” could get readers browsing other genres to accidentally look at your book and decide to try it. I’ve found a few books myself that way. Good things can come from accidents. Post-it notes came into existence because the researcher at 3M who was trying to develop a new super-strong adhesive saw the potential for his “failed” attempt that produced a weak one that didn’t damage surfaces.
My millennial son buys a fantasy adventure novel in paperback or hardcopy almost every week at Barnes & Noble or Hastings. I’ve watched him browse the shelves to pick something that triggers his interest. Platform may get the book on the shelf, but it’s not driving what he buys. I don’t think he’s unique in his age group. Your thoughts, Steve?
If the big publishing houses aren’t getting physical copies into bookstores, are they relying on Amazon for sales? If so, what kinds of concrete things do they do to increase online sales for their authors that small publishers and indies don’t/can’t do?
Carol,
Your son is one the reasons why I am so involved with Enclave Publishing and the production of quality science fiction and fantasy written from a Christian worldview. He should check out the web site (www.enclavepublishing.com).
Most traditional publishers have anywhere from 30-50% of their sales through Amazon. But that means 50% or more is sold elsewhere. To ignore any outlets is a perilous, if not limiting, choice.
I heard an author recommend sending out bookmarks (with your cover on it) to friends and family throughout the country and asking them to take the bookmarks into their local bookstore. Is that a waste of time? Do you think an author should work with bookstores to get their books stocked?
The cynic in me would imagine that the bookseller will nod politely and toss the bookmark on a desk somewhere and promptly forget it. But it can’t hurt. However, a store isn’t going to start carrying a book in the store just because there are bookmarks on the freebie table.
Better to become a local presence and befriend the local store. If your book is with a major publisher, the store will be more amenable to supporting you. But that is an unfortunate generalization.
Last week an old friend, Gary Smalley, passed away. I remember when he was a local counselor and hand carried his self published books into my store. We gladly stocked them because we knew he would point people to our store as a place to find them. Those later were picked up by Zondervan and FOR BETTER OR FOR BEST and IF ONLY HE KNEW became bestselling standards for Christian marriages.
So while that example is over 30 years old it still holds true. A local author with a quality book…who was regularly speaking and teaching…partnered in a small way with a local store.
Thank you for your helpful reply! I’m looking into partnering with an international charity. It would open up speaking opportunities and enable me to raise money for a charity I’m passionate about.
I’d want to invite local bookstores to sell books at the events in order to build relationships and then I’d also leave them with signed copies. It would take time to build these relationships, but I’m considering long-term goals for my writing career too.
I understand that bookstores are closing, and shelf space is shrinking as toys and knick-knacks take over. There also seem to be more authors tying to get published. My question is this. If the publisher doesn’t get your book on a shelf, what do they do?
Publishers already tell the authors they need to market, promote, distribute…etc. Companies may place it on Amazon and other on-line sites, but couldn’t the author could do that themselves for a far larger percent of the online profit?
Putting books on shelves is about the only marketing left for the traditional publisher. As that shrinks, what will publishers do for the 70% of the sales they take? Simply printing books with no distribution is vanity publishing isn’t it?
Could publishing companies that survive in the future move most of their resources into marketing? Have authors pitch clean, polished work to a marketer, who reads, decides on the book? Go to Print on Demand. Then this marketer runs the social media, Amazon critiques, fights for shelf space, budgets ad campaigns? All the stuff many authors are not well suited or positioned to do?
Brad,
It is a common misunderstanding that “bookstores are closing.” That may be true to an extent, but there are four new Barnes & Noble stores opening this year too. We read about closings, but not openings because bad news makes a headline.
You make a good argument for the Indie direction for authors. It would be ideal of everything were as cut and dried as described, but it is a messy business.
Print-on-Demand is very challenging from an economic perspective because the cost to print that book one-at-a-time is three to five times that of printing the same book in bulk (off-set printing). That is why POD books are often retailed $2-$4 more than their counterparts.
Publishing economics is not a simple widget, but instead is a rather complex bit of machinery with many moving parts…all which go into the pricing and profitability of the whole venture.
Steve, not on topic but did you realize this is a super special pi day? 3.14159 rounds to 3. 14 16.
Yes! We celebrated Pi Day last year on Fun Friday 3.1415….:
https://stevelaube2.wpengine.com/happy-pi-day/